In a mobile society people often change cities and continue to follow sports teams even after they move. For example, the Chicago Cubs baseball team has a large number of followers/fans throughout the United States. Those fans may prefer to listen to the audio play-by-play as provided by the announcers affiliated with the Cubs, as opposed to coverage that might otherwise be provided by a national network or broadcasting company.
Many people may not be able to watch their favorite team (e.g., the Chicago Cubs) after moving, and are instead only provided with games in a local market. For example, a baseball fan that moved from Chicago to New York City might only be able to watch New York Mets and New York Yankees games. That fan may want to watch a baseball game, but may reluctantly choose to watch a Mets game (as opposed to a Cubs game) due to a lack of Cubs coverage in the New York City market. That fan may have to settle for listening to the Cubs game via (AM) radio, for example. That same fan may also change channels during the Mets game (e.g., during a commercial break of the Mets game) to selectively watch portions of a Yankees game, all the while continuing to listen to the audio play-by-play of the Cubs game. The above setup is cumbersome and impractical in terms of a user experience.
In addition, many big screen high-definition televisions (HDTVs) emit significant radio frequency (RF) noise that interferes with AM radio reception if the radio receiver/antenna is in close proximity to an HDTV, for example. Thus, if the fan has the audio off on a display device (e.g., a television set) and has the radio on, significant interference from the TV may degrade the radio reception.
In recognition of the interference problem described above and other problems, alternative solutions have been proposed. However, there are a multitude of issues and problems associated with each of the proposed solutions as discussed in some examples below.
One issue/problem is the sheer volume of content that a user may wish to access. While the above description has largely focused on baseball, a user may desire access to a large variety of audiovisual content. For example, there are well over one-hundred college football teams in the United States. Most markets do not have enough radio stations to support a local transmission of the audio associated with each of the college football teams. This problem is exacerbated when one considers other types of content and/or programming (e.g., political, financial, arts, movies, talk shows, advertising, etc.) that a user may desire access to.
One proposed alternative solution has been to have groups sponsor out of state events. For example, a group of Cubs fans in New York might sponsor a Cubs game on a New York AM radio station. In this manner, scarce resources are allocated to the highest-valued use. But such sponsorship is costly (especially given the competition/wide variety of programming described above), and free-riders will attempt to enjoy the benefits of (e.g., listen in to) the Cubs game without contributing towards the sponsorship.
Another proposed solution has been to receive the audio as streaming audio over a computer. But most people may not have their computer hooked into their audio system, if they even have an audio system. Moreover, locating a desired audio source is difficult, given the large number of available sources.
Delays or skew between the audio content of a program and the visual content is another major issue. For example, the audio content may be received before television/visual content, thereby presenting challenges in terms of synchronizing the audio to the visual/video content. This synchronization problem was made even worse by the introduction of HDTV, as the visual content of HDTV tends to be even slower than its counterpart under conventional television programming.
Given the above-noted issues and problems, and in conjunction with other issues and problems that will become apparent upon reviewing this disclosure, users continue to seek a better audiovisual programming experience than is currently available.